About Us

The Office of Mentoring & Service-Learning (OMSL) was
established in the department of Student Affairs in the Student
Development division in the spring of 2000. The mission of the OMSL at
City College of San Francisco is to enhance student learning, promote
teaching innovations and involvement, respond to community needs and
foster civic responsibility and personal growth.

The role of the OMSL is to provide guidance and support to
faculty and students in meeting the goals of the faculty project, to
provide outreach and procedural information to community partners, and
to assess and ensure the success of the programs in meeting the goals
of the college. The kind of support that the office provides includes
orientation and training for peer-mentors and service-learning
students as appropriate, office and procedure support to faculty,
project/curriculum design consultation, outreach and communication
with the community, and assessment tools and reports. When possible
the OMSL will provide faculty and/or students with a stipend or equivalent.

The OMSL supports two types of programs to increase student success
and transfer, and enrich the college experience with hands-on
application of classroom learning.

In the mentoring program, faculty members sponsor projects and
recruit student mentors who have been through a course or program and
know the challenges that students will face. Mentors, with the
direction of a faculty sponsor, offer academic and personal support to
help students succeed. We currently have faculty sponsoring
peer-mentor projects in 27 academic and vocational courses or programs.

In the Service-Learning program, students participate in
co-curricular and curricular community service projects. Students
enrolled in courses offering service-learning as an option are placed
in the community, where they apply both their academic and practical
skills for the benefit of society. Service-Learning integrates
community service with academic instruction so that each strengthens
the other, and provides time for reflection and critical thinking
while making significant contributions to individuals, organizations,
and neighborhoods. For example, students taking biology courses may
contribute to habitat restoration. We also support service learning
projects which are linked directly to departments and the OMSL office,
such as the Civic Engagement Initiative, which places interns in
community-based organizations across the Bay Area to participate in
intensive internships of up to 15 hours per week. Our flagship
service learning program is Project SHINE (Students Helping in the
Naturalization of Elders), which places students from political
science, psychology, sociology, foreign languages and health science
in classrooms throughout the city to prepare elders to take the
citizenship exam.